VMware plans for the major release after vSphere 6.5 U1 version

VSphere 6.5 itself is a major release with lots of changes, and new features have been released compared to vSphere 6.0. latest release currently is vSphere 6.5 update 1. However, with the recent new announcements by VMware indicates that it is planning for the major release in next vSphere version with the huge difference in the features and options that VMware is trying to provide to the customer. Couple of these listed below will definitely makes life simpler and helps customer in ease management and cost optimization.

vCenter server for the Windows Operating system

Currently we have two options to deploy vCenter services w.r.t underlying operating system. vCenter server for Windows and vCenter server appliance (provided by VMware as an appliance. Before 6.x release, vCenter server for Windows has got more capabilities when compared to VCSA, however after 6.x release, there is no difference in capabilities either in VCSA or windows based vCenter.

Also, new release of vSphere 6.5.x, VMware has completed changed the underlying operating system of VCSA to Photon OS. With this major change has opened up to provide lots of features and capabilities from photon OS. VCSA has become so simple to deploy and manage now than vCenter for windows.

Key point was the database. VCSA comes with postgress database inbuilt. Back then prior to 6.5.x release, there was no option to backup, restore the database alone for the VCSA database. The only option we had was to back up the complete VM itself. But now in 6.5.x release, VCSA has got high-class capabilities such as file-based backup and restore, GUI based database management integrated in the vCenter management console itself.

Hence, VMware has decided to deprecate the windows based vCenter in the next release of vSphere. Official blog post is announced here . With this move customer will get a great cost optimization benefits. He can avoid windows licensing for vCenter and database VMs, SQL App licensing and no dedicated VM required for the vCenter database.

2. vSphere web client:

To access and manage vCenter we have several options, vSphere C# Client, vSphere web Client, vSphere HTML5 based client, and Powercli.

Some time ago in July 2016, VMware had made two important announcements.

New GUI based UI to access and manage vCenter i.e., HTML5 based UI and

No vSphere C# client development in further release and said Good bye to it

After which there were two GUI options available which are Flash based vSphere web client and HTML5 based vSphere client. (vSphere C# Client was available however more feature options provided in flash based web client.)

However, Flash based vSphere web client is not reliable and ease of management as it had many issues, slow responsiveness, dependency of Adobe flash player. Customers were not happy with the web Client. Additionally Adobe had made decision to deprecate the Flash. Official announcements are here

So, VMware had decided to deprecate vSphere web client and the official announcement has made here

Successor to vSphere web client and previous options is HTML5 based vSphere client. With the recent release of vSphere 6.5 update 1, HTML5 based vSphere client has got most of the features and options provided and made ease of management of vCenter. Since it is HTML5 based UI, customers had seen better performance and usability compared to web client. From next release onwards, this HTML5 based vSphere client will be the primary FUI for vCenter access and management per VMware.

3. vmkLinux APIs and associated drivers:

VMware vSphere has got capability to leverage almost all the driver ecosystems to run various tasks for network and storage operations. From vSphere 5.5 release onwards VMware had announced native API and native associated driver integration. Native integration gives various benefits and makes the network and storage operations faster and improvises the performance. Various vendors have also been adapted with this change & used in many customer deployments. Hence VMware has made a decision to deprecate the vmklinux APIs and associate driver ecosystems and the official announcement is here